Well, other than wishing you a Happy Anniversary on Saturday. 😉 But when you have three anniversary dates to keep track of, that’s to be expected. In fact, re-reading that entry about our three anniversaries, it looks like this wasn’t the first time I was early with my anniversary wishes!
Anyhow, nine years and counting as a married couple (and many more as a “living in sin” couple!) Hooray for us!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knp9-GY6fHE
If you’re a big Beatles fan and know the stories behind what inspired many of their songs, you’ll get lots of laughs out of these re-imagined titles.
Some examples:
Last year, I capped my week-long Freedom to Read Week series with a post where I mentioned that Pace had written his name for the first time ever. That led me to ruminate on what a major milestone this is and how illiteracy is another “big picture” form of censorship beyond the “banned books”-type issues that we usually think about during FTRW.
(To summarize, this week, I’ve talked about a variety of things that are de facto forms of censorship – limiting democracy, e-books, political correctness, illiteracy.)
Quite unintentionally, this week’s FTRW series is going to end on a similar note to last year.
I was home with Pace yesterday and he was playing with a stapler (er, that doesn’t sound good!) He realised that, if he stapled a couple pages together, it looked like a book. That inspired us to try to make a real book. I asked him to tell me a story and what you see written below is pretty much exactly what came out of his mouth (I wish I could say he was responsible for the drawings as well but unfortunately, that’s all on me.)
Anyhow, it’s so gratifying to see the progression in one short year – from just writing his name to now telling fully developed stories with beginnings, middles and ends, protagonists and all that good English 30 type stuff.
Maybe by next year, the next milestone will be that he writes a book – that’s so bad that I renounce all my personal beliefs and have to trash it because it’s really vulgar and offensive! 😉
My prediction? This new movie from comedian Bobcat Goldthwait won’t cause any controversy at all. 😉
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ul4CZrnEFxU
I’ve already mentioned that I’ve got a longer post on e-books and libraries percolating.
This post isn’t it.
But, as I’ve ended up doing “big picture” censorship topics for Freedom to Read Week this year compared to my usual stories about books that have <gasp> swears in them and movies that have <double gasp> boobies, I thought I’d explore a bit about how the enormous growth of e-books is becoming a weird form of de facto censorship.
I’m not even talking about the well-documented instances where big players like Apple and/or Amazon have removed books were already in their store or even that customers have bought and paid for.
And I’m not talking about how the increasing movement towards e-books threatens to squeeze out those who can’t afford laptops and e-readers and iPads and all the other “extras” of this brave new world.
Those things are both bad enough but even worse is how many books simply aren’t available in e-book format at all – either because they’re out of print or they’re from a small publisher who hasn’t moved to e-publishing yet or their copyrights aren’t clear so they can’t be made available.
On top of that, there’s a number of large publishers who have simply refused to make their titles available for library lending and that, to me, is a form of censorship as well.
I’m starting to get into what I want to cover in my longer e-book post but I think publishers are completely missing the boat here, targeting libraries by not making their books available instead of dealing with other larger access/distribution/pricing issues around e-books.
Sound familiar? It’s the same problem that the music industry made initially and perhaps has not recovered from, even with the growth of the iTunes store. The movie industry is even worse – those guys have cried wolf for EVERY MAJOR TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT OF THE PAST 100 YEARS!
Ultimately, whether it’s music or movies or books, the reality is that this is isn’t a problem of price, it’s a problem of access. And any time publishers or corporations decide to restrict access and prevent readers from accessing content they want to access, they’re not protecting their bottom line. Instead, they’re putting another nail in their own coffin.
No, not the seven-second delay when the documentary picture winner said “fuck” – that’s nothing.
Yesterday, I wrote about censorship from a more broad perspective than the usual FTRW topics of censorship of books (and DVD’s and graphic novels and so on.) Today, I’d like to continue talking about bigger picture (er, no pun intended) censorship issues by looking at something that happened at the Oscars on Sunday night.
If you were following the telecast on Twitter and via other social media sites, you saw a huge amount of snark towards various aspects of the show including the weight and/or appearance of a number of celebrities (especially the females, whether it was Melissa McCarthy being too heavy or Angelina Jolie being too skinny.)
I oscillated between finding this distasteful and finding it hilarious. But thinking of how it was Freedom to Read week and that censorship can come from the any direction (which we traditionally think of as left and right) including people who are being overly politically correct, (and as tough as it is to admit, especially on a national anti-bullying day) I think it is ultimately better that everyone be allowed to make their jokes about anything with no subject off-limits – weight, race, gener, religion, whatever.
I can’t remember but I think it was George Carlin who defended this approach by saying it’s always better when these things are out in the open instead of trying to hide them. I agree.
Of course, I also think of what Calgary Freedom to Read Award co-founder (and eventually recipient) Bob Stallworthy said, “Just because you have the right to offend someone, doesn’t mean you should.”
That’s very true. But I’d rather that people have the right to tell Angelina Jolie to have a sandwich then not being allowed to say it at all. Because goddammit, I’m not even joking when I say that woman needs a sandwich!
Censorship doesn’t just happen with books and videos, it happens in a variety of ways when people in positions of power and authority attempt to control, influence and manipulate your behaviour.
Perhaps the most insidious way that they do this is when powerful people attempt to eliminate our fundamental democratic rights. Right now, a major scandal has erupted over allegations that the Conservative Party of Canada did exactly that by using mis-leading “robo-calls” to direct supporters of other parties to incorrect polling locations in the last federal election.
A classmate from library school lives Guelph which is one of the dozens of ridings that saw the use of these tactics. And, like a good librarian, he managed to get a recording of the robo-call he received for posterity’s sake.
I know that a lot of times people across all parts of the political spectrum go too far in trying to portray what the people on the other end of the spectrum as “scary” or “ruining the country” or whatever. I’ve been guilty of that myself on occasion.
But if hearing this clip doesn’t make you think twice about what the Federal Conservatives stand for – tactics that wouldn’t be out of line for a third-world dictator – then I don’t know what would ever possibly convince you to get really angry about the true danger to Canada and Canadian values that the Harper Government represents?
Both “scary” and “ruining the country” at the same time! Truly odiously shameful.
I’m a bit slow off the draw this year since it started yesterday but Happy Freedom to Read Week 2012! And I’ll also never top my FTRW Music Monday post from 2010. But I can try…
Well-known atheist, Sam Harris, recently posted “The Fireplace Delusion” as an analogy to help atheists understand how theists see the world (and especially how they feel when their beliefs are criticized).
The point he makes is that a wood fire – in a home hearth or around a campfire – with its strong associations of community, comfort and tradition, is also well-documented by science to be extremely harmful to humans, the environment and so on.
And yet, even knowing the facts, many of us persist in enjoying our fires, theist or no. Just as many theists continue to enjoy their belief system in the face of all scientific evidence and facts.
(via Reddit which unfortunately, gets sidetracked into a side debate about eating meat as another thing we also all know is bad but do anyhow)
Ahhh, how sweet…
But in all seriousness, “Cum On Feel the Noize” plays a very big role in my early “education”.
A classmate was making a poster for a school dance in elementary school and I, being Mr. Brainiac Smart-pants, mentioned his obvious mis-spelling of the word “Come” on the poster.
So, with the patience one shows for a toddler or a nerdy future librarian who lacks the insights provided by an older metalhead brother like he had, my buddy took me to a quiet corner of the school gym and told me that no, he had actually spelled the word “cum” properly and went on to explain some of the deeper lyrical symbolism of Quiet Riot’s metal masterpiece.
I’m not sure if that lesson was why I went on to become an English major (okay, pretty sure “not”) but given Pace’s recent fascination with homonyms, I thought I’d share this anecdote that shows how he at least comes by it honestly! Er, no pun intended. 😉
